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Judge Lets Sony Access GeoHot's PayPal Account
An anonymous reader writes with an excerpt from TechDirt that says "Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero has awarded Sony a subpoena that grants the company access to the PayPal account of PlayStation 3 jailbreaker George Hotz, also known as GeoHot, for the last two years. Emil: Spero ruled that the Japanese console maker may acquire 'documents sufficient to identify the source of funds in California that went into any PayPal account associated with geohot@gmail.com for the period of January 1, 2009, to February 1, 2011.'"
I will never buy anything from them again, and I will do my best to persuade others from doing so.
There are two things here.
1 - Sony wants the case fought in California where their offices are, because it is cheaper and more convenient for them there. It is also more expensive for GeoHot in California, and it less likely he can afford to go to trial. By running him out of legal defense funds and keeping the case in California, they might force him to settle. Unless there is a smoking gun, such as the majority of the donations coming from California, this really shouldn't keep the case there.
2 - Secondly, Sony wants to sue others, not just GeoHot. They're trying to get info via discovery to do precisely that.
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Don't mean to stop the two minutes hate, but this is being done to determine if California would be an appropriate venue for the lawsuit. The defendant is from New Jersey and obviously wants the case tried there, where as having it there would be more costly for Sony. Sony is arguing that because the defendant may have received money from people residing in the state of California, it would be an appropriate venue. They want the records to see how many people from California sent him money. So far this has nothing to do with charging anyone else and it may be impossible to do with the data they get from this.
As far as I know, what he did may have been illegal. Circumvention of copyright protection has been illegal in the US, although recently some of these restrictions have been eased. It's possible that in this case the court will decide the laws are unjust or don't apply. That's how the system works. You're stuck with a bad law until it gets repealed or overturned in court.
In my opinion Sony shot themselves in the foot by removing the other OS feature. I think that really made developers work towards hacking the console more than anything else. To be perfectly honest, there have already been plenty of other reasons not to buy from Sony. This is the straw that broke the camel's back for you? Either way, I'll let you get back to overreacting.
They just want to find persons in California that has payed to his account so they can say that he got connections to California so the case can be tried there.
Just saying it like it are.
If that cash went through a real bank, would the outcome be the same?
PayPal's weird semi-bank-state allows for legal action I never heard of otherwise.
Oh hell no, they're going to arrange to not only him but anyone he sold to? This man did nothing illegal, and they're going to go after the funds he has made from his work. Sony, rot in hell. I will never buy from you again.
Your sentiments are appropriate; I've also been involved in negative word-of-mouth advertising for Sony. Pass the word.
However, this is Sony's effort to prove GeoHot did business in California, where Sony wants the case held. Fishing? Perhaps a bit of that too, I wouldn't put it past them.
The real story, however, is the class action suit (CAS) against Sony for their removal of the OtherOS functionality in update 3.2.1. This is the update that GeoHot's mod reversed.
It's clear to me that Sony wants to muddy the waters as much as possible. The lawsuit is an absolute monster, I wouldn't be surprised if they had to re-brand afterwards. Look to Groklaw.net for clarity, there's a huge amount of detail there.
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The cost of fighting in CA vs NJ is immaterial for a company like Sony. Corporations use venue shopping all the time to find favorable jurisdictions, and this is almost certainly why they want the case tried in the northern district of CA. This becomes crystal clear when you look at the history of decisions by this particular judge, both in this case and others (e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/321_Studios_v._Metro_Goldwyn_Mayer_Studios,_Inc.).
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